From slaves to sultans: the rise of the Mamluks (1250-1260)

Part oneWhat a mamluk was

The word mamluk means one who is owned. In history it means something more particular: a soldier bought as a boy, brought up as a Muslim and trained to fight for the ruler who owned him. The Abbasids had used such soldiers since the ninth century, and the Fatimids and Ayyubids used them too. In India the Delhi Sultanate had its own line of slave kings, founded by Qutb al-Din Aibak, and the Ottomans would later build their Janissaries on the same idea.

The boys came mainly from two places. One was the steppe north of the Black Sea, in what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, home of the Kipchak Turks, a nomadic people who were mostly not yet Muslim. Poverty and war drove families to sell children to slave traders. The other was the Caucasus, home of the Circassians and Georgians.

In Egypt the boys lived in barracks. They learned the Quran and the basics of Islamic law, and they trained for years in horsemanship, archery and the lance. When their training was done, they were freed with a certificate and joined the ranks as horsemen. A mamluk stayed loyal to the master who had freed him, almost as to a father, and to the men who had trained beside him, almost as to brothers. Under Salahuddin and his family the system grew into the backbone of the army.

Part twoMasters of their masters

The last great Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, al-Salih Ayyub, bought Mamluks in large numbers and housed many of them on an island in the Nile. They were called the Bahri Mamluks, from bahr, the word for a great river or sea. Many were Kipchaks, and among them was a young soldier named Baibars.

In 1249 King Louis IX of France landed at Damietta with a crusading army. Al-Salih Ayyub died while the campaign was under way, and his widow, Shajar al-Durr, kept his death secret for a time and held the state together. In 1250 the Mamluks beat the crusaders near Mansura and took the French king prisoner. He was released only after he gave back Damietta and paid a large ransom.

The victory belonged to the Mamluks, and they knew it. When the new Ayyubid sultan, al-Salih's son, arrived from the north and began to favour his own men, the Mamluks killed him. Shajar al-Durr was proclaimed ruler for a short time, and then she married a senior Mamluk officer, Aybak, who became the first Mamluk sultan. The Ayyubid princes still ruled in Syria, but Egypt now belonged to its former slaves. The Mamluk sultanate would last from 1250 to 1517. Historians divide it into two periods: the Bahri, mostly Kipchak Turks, until 1382, and the Burji, mostly Circassians, from 1382 to the end.

Part threeThe prince who became a slave

Aybak was killed in 1257, and his young son was put on the throne at the age of about fifteen. The news from the east was growing worse every month. Baghdad fell in February 1258. The senior officers saw that a boy could not lead Egypt against the Mongols. In 1259 the vice-sultan, Qutuz, set the boy aside and took power himself.

Qutuz had his own reason to know the Mongols. The story told of him is that he was born Mahmud ibn Mamdud, a prince of the Khwarazmian royal house that Genghis Khan had destroyed. The Mongols killed his family and enslaved him, and sold him in a market in Syria. He was bought by a waqf, an endowed institution that bought boys from the slave market, taught them the Islamic sciences and trained them to fight. When he was grown he went to Egypt and joined the Mamluks under the name Sayf al-Din Qutuz. His skill as a fighter and a planner carried him up the ranks.

So the man who would face the Mongols in 1260 had lost his family and his freedom to them as a child. Beside him was Baibars, a Kipchak who had been sold as a boy and had fought at Mansura.

The men who would save Egypt had once been sold as boys in foreign markets.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Dr Stef KerisHow Slaves Saved The World From The Mongols (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• The Kipchak steppe
• the Caucasus
• Cairo
• Rawda island
• Mansura
• Damietta

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter